Lineages
Every great book stands on older ones. Homer gave Virgil his wanderings and his war; Virgil walked Dante through Hell. Bring any book to the centre: what it draws on is to its left, what draws on it to its right.
Of its time
It draws on
Tasso builds his crusade on Homer's model: a siege, a camp divided by a quarrel, and its greatest warrior, Rinaldo, withdrawn from the fight until his return wins it, as Achilles' does at Troy.
From Virgil, Tasso takes the epic of a destined mission and what it costs. The crusaders' march on Jerusalem echoes Aeneas' journey to Italy, and the sorceress Armida, who holds Rinaldo back from his duty, plays the part of Dido.
Tasso wrote in Ariosto's shadow and borrows his materials, enchanted gardens, warrior maidens, knights led astray by love, while binding them into a single, serious epic of the First Crusade.
No later work in the atlas draws on it yet.
The whole web
Every line in the atlas, by place or by time. Tap a work to bring it to the centre.